


Awaken

by dotfic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-06
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 16:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were things Kate didn't know. And then she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awaken

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Inspired by a piece of backstory Chris Argent mentioned in an episode. It's also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it crossover. Thank you to sistabro and siterlas because a lot of this is totally their fault and to sistabro for the beta.

It was Mama who first put a crossbow in Kate's hands, showed her the right way to hold it, how to aim. She also nailed a target to the oak tree in the back yard of their old house, the one near enough the ocean that the air sometimes smelled salty.

"Good," Mama said after the arrow hit near the center. "Good, Kate." With her dark braid falling over one shoulder, Mama smiled wide. 

"I'll hit the bulls-eye by tomorrow," Kate said. Chris already could, but she was better than Chris at other things even though he was older, and she'd be better at this too.

"Yeah, you probably will." Mama brushed the hair back from Kate's cheek, then handed her another arrow. 

*

"That's it, son, and don't you slow down just because you get near the end," Papa shouted as Chris ran through the obstacle course.

Wind rippled the tall grasses of the field. The day was warm and sunny one minute, gray and cool the next, the sky half full of clouds. Kate zipped up her light jacket, smelling salt on the air.

Chris vaulted over the last fence and ran hard towards the finish line. Papa clicked the old stopwatch and held it up while Chris leaned over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard.

"Look at that, Kate, a new record." He jotted the number into the small notepad he kept in his jacket pocket. "Samuel, rest his soul, would be puce with envy," Papa muttered, pleased.

"I can beat it." 

"You can try," Chris said dropping down and taking a water bottle out of his knapsack. He gave her a feral challenge of a grin.

"You sure can, sweetheart," Papa said. "Go." He jerked his head towards the starting point.

She didn't beat Chris's record that day.

* 

The house carried secrets like a scent.

Sometimes men and women in dark clothes visited late, after Kate was supposed to be in bed. They'd go with Papa and Mama to the basement. Kate would get out of bed, pausing after each step to make sure the floor didn't creak too much, and make her way down the stairs.

The door to the basement was in dark hall wedged off the kitchen and there Kate would crouch in her pajamas, trying to listen. There was a locked room in the basement behind a metal door--only Papa and Mama had the key--and that was where these meetings took place in the dark hours. Kate couldn't quite bring herself to go all the way down to that door, but the sound of voices carried through a vent. She never made out specifics, only tone of voices--long talks that on some nights rolled into arguments. Then Mama's voice would rise above the rest, sharper than she ever was with Chris or Kate, and the others, including Papa, would go quiet to listen to her.

Chris caught her a few times, grabbing her arm, pulling Kate reluctantly back up to her room. Sometimes he'd tuck her in, and sit for a little while, reading to her.

"Stop trying to listen in," he said one chilly night as the tree branches scraped at her window. "There's stuff you don't need to know yet."

She had no idea what he meant by that, or why Chris got to know things Kate didn't. Chris thought he was so smart and big, but he wasn't at the secret meetings either.

Kate folded her arms and stuck out her tongue.

Chris turned out the light and left.

There were things in the dark, the shadow of branches turning into claws. Kate scrambled out of bed and turned on the nightlight, then quickly got back under the covers again.

* 

The training course was old--a series of fences, water traps, and holes--and as far as Kate knew, the layout had stayed basically the same generation to generation. She grouped it in her head with the archery lessons, the gymnastics, the martial arts--the emphasis on fitness ran high in their family. _Mens sana in corpore sano,_ Papa kept saying. 

It was a few years until she broke Chris's record, but finally, she did.

*

When Kate was in middle school, Papa kept urging on her interest in science beyond the limitations of what her grade had to offer. Chris was taking physics and mineralogy at the big high school and on Sunday afternoons he'd show Kate whatever they were working on.

Chris's best friend in high school was a wiry, long-limbed kid named David who seemed to eat more meals at the Argent's than he did at his own house. He was on the basketball team with Chris, and unlike a lot of the high school jocks, he wasn't obnoxious to the younger kids. David called her "Katie" without her even hating it, which she should have, because she hated cute nicknames. She was just Kate. Somehow she couldn't bring herself to tell David that, and she enjoyed hearing his laughter in the old house, which was often too quiet.

The summer before Kate started high school, a massive heat wave pressed down on the county along with a rise in wild animal attacks. Mountain lions, the news said. She spent a lot of time at the local pool, let Tony Hitchens kiss her, and practiced archery, sweat sticking hair against the back of her neck, tickling. 

That was the summer Kate found out what the basement meetings were about.

That was the summer when David showed up but his laughter and teasing didn't, and Chris developed dark circles under his eyes. The two of them seemed to spend more time together than usual, but instead of goofing off like usual did, they talked in low voices, always seemed to be hurrying off somewhere. 

David was the one changing, but Chris was growing farther away.

*

At two o'clock in the morning, Kate woke to voices downstairs, hurrying footsteps. Her window framed the full moon, a bright luminous ghostly circle, an inescapable spotlight.

She got out of bed crept out into the hall, pausing after each step to keep the floor from creaking. The terrible sound of her brother's raw hoarse sobs drifted up from the family room. Mama sat with Chris on the couch, trying to soothe him, while Papa stood by the fireplace, jawline firm.

Finally, Papa looked up, and seemed to see her clearly despite the shadows.

"You can come down now, Kate," he said, as if he'd known all along she was there, known she'd been listening to for years.

She walked downstairs in her bare feet, wearing her sleeping shorts with little flowers all over them and favorite soft t-shirt. Her fingers trailed along the smooth varnish of the banister. It was as if she wasn't actually there, but watching some other girl named Kate, some other girl watching her big brother's hands shake.  
"This is why there's a code," Mama said, smoothing the hair back from Chris's forehead, eyes on Papa.

"He did what had to be done," Papa said.

"We follow the code." Mama straightened her back, dark hair falling over her shoulder and Papa turned away first. Very few people could stare Mama down when she looked like that. "You did the best you could," Mama said low to Chris, as Kate gingerly sat in one of the wooden chairs. "You did all you could, it's not your fault." She took his chin in her hands and made Chris look at her. "You did your best, no one is blaming you. But we have a code for a reason. You understand? Chris--" she said, more insistently, as he only blinked, barely responding. "You understand?"

Chris nodded.

"What happened?" Kate asked when the dryness in her mouth would allow her to speak.

They all turned to look at Kate.

*

Chris once told Kate about how when Chris was little, before Kate was even born yet, their parents would take periodic trips. There had been this girl there who used to babysit him, the daughter of a friend of the family. She'd had bright yellow hair, but mostly Chris said he remembered how one night a bat had gotten into the house. Rather than panicking and trying to kill it, she'd calmly chased it out using a broom, without hurting it.

 _There's more than one way. There's a code for a reason,_ she'd told Chris. That was the end of the story--Chris had never told Kate what the girl had meant by it. 

*

That awful summer night, Kate sat on the floor leaning against the bed while her brother tried to sleep. He was fitful. Mama'd closed the curtains against the moonlight but it didn't do any good. 

Kate grabbed his hand as his breathing changed, rasping too fast in his throat as he woke. She held on tight and Chris squeezed back until his breathing calmed.

This _thing_ that had taken away David so he'd never call her "Katie" and annoy her again, this thing that had destroyed her brother's heart--it deserved what had happened to it.

"It wasn't David anymore," Kate whispered, her hand still caught tightly in Chris's even though he'd fallen asleep. "You did your best."

Things like that should die, with their deceptively human faces. They were ugly liars. They should all die.

*

"Show me knife throwing next," Kate told Papa.

"Oh, sweetheart," Papa sipped his coffee, standing with her on the porch on a fall morning. "You've only just learned about what's out there, it must be a lot to take in. I'm not sure you're quite ready."

The mist rose from the lawn and the pines, chill as Kate imagined ghosts would be.

"I want to learn," she said. "I'm not some scared little girl."

Papa smiled a little around the rim of the coffee cup--a smile that somehow Kate felt wasn't meant for her to see. "All right, then." His expression grew unreadable again. "You know, your brother did what was necessary. There is a code, but that doesn't mean you don't do whatever is necessary to be done." He rested his coffee mug on the porch railing. "Survival, Kate. That's the key."

Kate nodded.


End file.
